Mary Ellen Chase

Mary Ellen Chase 1887-1973, American educator and writer, b. Blue Hill, Maine, grad. Univ. of Maine, 1909. Her works, set in Maine and excellent in their regional fidelity, include a biography and the novels Mary Peters (1934) and Windswept (1941). She also wrote biblical studies such as Life and Language in the Old Testament (1955) and children's books like The Story of Lighthouses (1965). Her autobiographical volumes are A Goodly Heritage (1932), A Goodly Fellowship (1939), and The White Gate (1954).

Chase, Mary Ellen (1887–1973), was born in Maine, from whose state university she graduated, and whose land, traditions, and people she celebrated in many of her books. In addition to her career as a professor of English, mainly at Smith (1926–55), she is known as a popular author. Her fiction includes Mary Peters (1934) and Silas Crockett (1935), novels about New England seafaring families; Dawn in Lyonesse (1938), a modern parallel of the Tristan and Isolde story; Windswept (1941); The Plum Tree (1949); The Edge of Darkness (1957), set in northern Maine; and Lovely Ambition (1960), set partly in Maine, partly in England. Other writings include This England (1936); The Bible and the Common Reader (1944); Jonathan Fisher (1948), biography of a Maine minister; Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1950); Life and Language in the Old Testament (1955); and three autobiographical works: A Goodly Heritage (1932); A Goodly Fellowship (1939), and The White Gate (1954). She also wrote many children's books.